ANNUAL  ADDRESS 


DELIVERED  BEFORE  THE 


ESSEX  AGRICULTURAL  SOCIETY 


BY 


HON.  ROBERT  S.  RANTOUL, 


OF  SALEM, 


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AT  PEABODY, 
September  24TH,  1896. 


SALEM,  MASS. : 
Newcomb  & Gauss,  Printers, 
1896. 


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The  speaker  who  would  address  this  body  finds  himself 
embarrassed,  at  the  start,  with  a plethora  of  topics.  The 
whole  field  of  agriculture — ancient  and  modern — lies  open 
before  him.  He  may  treat  agriculture  historically,  as  the 
most  venerable  of  callings,  characterized  as  the  “ noblest 
of  pursuits  ” by  Timothy  Pickering  in  your  early  by-laws. 
He  may  trace  its  growth  and  development  since  Adam 
delved  and  Noah  began  to  be  an  husbandman  and  planted 
a vineyard.  Or  he  may  treat  agriculture  scientifically,  as 
a grand,  untiring  chemical  process,  converting  the  elements 
of  the  air  and  soil  into  fruits  and  root-crops  and  cereals  in 
the  first  instance,  and  these  in  turn,  passed  once  through 
the  potent  alembic  of  the  animal  economy, — thus  one  de- 
gree removed  from  the  simple  products  of  the  soil, — being 
rendered  into  human  food  in  a secondary  or  condensed  con- 
dition, as  beef  and  pork  and  mutton  and  dairy  products 
and  poultry, — the  very  expressed  essence  of  vegetable 
life.  Or  he  may  treat  agriculture  from  its  social  and 
political  side, — showing  the  varying  tenures  by  which  its 
votaries  have  held,  from  time  to  time,  the  soil  they  tilled, 
the  varying  burthens  imposed,  from  time  to  time,  onUand 
and  those  who  dress  it, — showing  the  varying  rank  as- 
signed the  husbandman,  from  time  to  time,  in  the  estima- 
tion of  mankind.  Or  he  may  trace  agriculture  in  its  new 
adaptation  of  means  to  ends, — analyses  of  soils  and 
manures, — rotation  of  crops, — ever  new  applications  of 
processes  and  contrivances, — skilful  crossing  of  varieties 

PZl%\o 


4 


and  strains  and  types, — which  modern  specialism  has 
brought  to  light  since  the  establishment  of  schools  of  hus- 
bandry a century  ago — since  the  introduction  of  agricul- 
tural chemistry,  a branch  of  science  only  half  a century  of 
age.  Or  he  may  content  himself  and  perhaps  his  audience 
with  reading  a prose  idyl  on  the  charms  of  country  living. 

But  again  he  may  abandon  all  this.  There  are  still 
other  topics  open  to  the  speaker,  which,  if  he  be  of  an 
antiquarian  turn,  he  will  find  it  difficult  indeed  to  resist. 
He  is  addressing  a society  now  four  score  years  of  age. 
It  has  its  local  traditions  and  a story  which  no  son  of  Essex 
can  but  recall  with  pride.  It  bears  recorded  on  its  honor- 
able roll,  most  of  the  brightest  names  this  ancient,  popu- 
lous, intelligent  and  historic  section  has  produced.  It 
embraces  a whole  County,  and  that  County  the  third  in 
population,  wealth  and  rank,  in  all  the  fourteen  counties 
of  the  State, — a county  second  to  none  in  the  variety  of  its 
industries,  in  the  character,  thrift,  culture  and  achieve- 
ments of  its  people,  or,  for  it  embraces  Beverly,  Glouces- 
ter, Manchester,  Topsfield,  Andover  and  the  Merrimac,  in 
the  grandeur  of  its  ocean  scenery  or  in  the  quiet,  winning 
beauty  of  its  rural  landscape.  He  is  addressing  a society 
which  had  for  its  founder  in  1817-18  no  less  a personage 
than  that  stalwart  old  Roman — that  modern  Cincinnatus, 
that  stormy-petrel  of  Massachusetts  politics, — Colonel 
Timothy  Pickering — and  the  temptation  to  any  one  who 
knows  his  checkered  and  extraordinary  career, — you  re- 
member that  he  took  your  first  prize  at  a plowing  match, 
when  seventy-five  years  old, — the  temptation  to  postpone 
all  else  until  he  has  exhausted  that,  is  so  imperious,  —so  well 
nigh  irresistible,  that  only  the  imminence  of  the  dinner 
hour,  and  an  increasing  sense  of  the  emptiness  of  things 
below,  is  able  to  restrain  me  from  inviting  you  to  listen  to 
an  abstract  of  his  life. 

Turning  his  face  from  this  engaging  picture,  the  orator 


5 


who  addresses  this  body  might  well  invite  you  to  a review, 
— hurried  and  inadequate  though  it  could  not  fail  to  be, 
— of  the  record  of  your  own  career.  Should  he  rehearse 
this,  he  would  point  for  inspiration  to  such  names  as  Story 
and  White  and  Saltonstall  and  Cummins  and  Cleaveland 
and  Nichols  and  Merrill  and  all  that  splendid  group  of 
worthies,  who  took  early  part  with  Pickering  in  assuring 
your  success. 

It  would  be  a story  of  intelligent  and  public-spirited  at- 
tempts to  make  of  a not  too  generous  soil,  described  in  the 
first  of  the  series  of  practical  annual  addresses  from  Col. 
Pickering,  in  1820,  as  “already  exhausted  and  needing 
manures  ” — to  make  of  the  old  historic  farms  of  Essex 
county,  standing — scores  of  them— in  the  names  of  the 
original  settlers — so  many  of  them  that  your  prize  lists 
read  today  like  the  records  of  baptisms  and  burials  in  the 
early  churches, — to  make  of  such  a patrimony  a fit  abiding 
place  for  themselves  and  those  who  should  come  after  them. 
It  would  be  a story  of  experiments  costly  of  time  and 
means, — too  often  ending  in  defeat, — in  many  of  the  vital 
problems  of  the  present  hour: — In  the  promotion  and  en- 
couragement of  tree-culture,  for  example, — premiums  of- 
fered, year  after  year,  for  seedling  forest  trees,  in  half-acre 
and  acre  lots,  raised  mainly  for  the  shipyards,  but  also  for 
fuel  and  for  bark, — bounties  on  sumach,  in  the  interests  of 
the  tanneries, — bounties  on  larch,  a new  thing,  then,  in 
ship-building, — on  hackmetac,  on  white  ash,  on  the  oaks, 
for  the  use  of  shipwrights, — bounties  on  hickory  for  the 
coopers, — not  neglecting  bounties  on  the  locust  and  white 
mulberry  and  sugar-maple ; — it  would  be  a story  of  large 
funds,  raised  by  private  gift,  in  order  that  the  state  bounty, 
just  offered  in  a conditional  act  of  1819,  might  be  secured 
to  brave  old  Essex ; — the  story  of  a trial  of  Alderney 
stock,  as  early  as  1826  — a story  of  scant  attention  paid  to 
horses  and  to  sheep,  whilst  boldly  launching  out  in  a fifteen 


6 


years’  effort  to  force  silk-culture  and  the  introduction  of 
the  mulberry ; — a story  of  failure  in  a vigorous  attempt  to 
introduce  “ live  fences,”  as  the  records  then  called  hedges, 
— of  first  turning  attention,  from  1835  to  1840,  to  horse- 
ploughing,  to  nurseries,  to  kitchen-gardening,  to  the  dyna- 
mometer ; — a story,  finally,  of  great  account  naturally  made 
of  drainage,  but  of  quite  as  much  attention  paid  (and  this 
I cannot  understand)  in  essays  and  bounties  and  commit" 
tees  and  gratuities,  to  the  subject  of  irrigation,  as  to  drain- 
age. To  a layman  (and  you  see  before  you  a very  lame 
un),  it  would  seem  that  irrigation  was  a problem  foreign 
to  the  agriculture  of  Essex  county.  But  it  has  not  been  so 
treated.  And  I am  driven  for  an  explanation  to  the  peril- 
ous conjecture  that,  as  this  watering  problem  can  by  no 
possibility  have  had  to  do,  in  any  way,  with  the  milk  sup- 
ply, it  must  have  borne  some  hidden  relation  to  the  trouble- 
some cider  problem,  for  very  great  attention  was  paid,  in 
early  years,  to  cider, — cider  bounties,  cider  gratuities,  cider 
committees,  cider  essays, — until,  in  1834,  a vote  was  passed 
condemning  the  barrel  of  cider  which  should  take  the  first 
premium  each  year,  for  immediate  consumption  at  the  an- 
nual dinner,  and  this  siderial  frenzy  finally  giving  wav  be- 
fore a growing  adverse  sentiment,  and  a premium  offered 
at  last  for  the  best  essay  on  feeding  cider-apples  to  swine 
and  fat  cattle,  in  the  very  year  of  all  others  of  this  cen- 
tury, the  year  of  the  hard-cider  campaign  of  1840. 

These  brilliant  annual  gatherings  culminated  in  the 
splendid  fair  at  Lynn  in  1848 — the  society  then  a genera- 
tion old— the  finest  show  thus  far — where  there  were  seen 
twenty-nine  ploughs,  and  an  unrivaled  field  of  stock,  and 
Daniel  Webster — show  enough  in  himself — amongst  the 
speakers  at  the  dinner  : — the  society  later  extending  its 
fairs  to  cover  two  days  each,  and  holding  them  at  the  same 
spot  for  two  or  three  consecutive  years : — then  debating 
long  and  well  the  problem  of  a permanent  location  :■ — first 


7 


in  1825,  favoring  for  a domicile  the  Switzerland  of  this 
region,  Topsfield,  the  scene  of  ail  their  earlier  successes, 
for  it  was,  in  old  stage  days,  the  metropolis  of  Essex 
county : — then  deferring  action  because  two  other  towns, 
Newbury  and  South  Danvers,  both  had  their  advocates : — 
then,  in  1860,  again  proposing  Topsfield,  for  the  Treadwell 
Farm  had  then  come  into  the  Society’s  possession  ; and 
now  at  last,  after  a migratory,  nomadic  life  of  two  com- 
pleted generations,  comfortably  housed  under  a roof-tree 
of  its  own  at  Peabody. 

But  I set  my  face  against  all  these  temptations  because 
I wish  to  say  a word  on  one  or  two  topics  of  present  inter- 
est to  the  agriculture  of  the  county. 

Massachusetts  has  always  been  the  most  thickly  settled 
of  the  States  except  Rhode  Island.  Amongst  the  fourteen 
counties  of  Massachusetts,  Essex  County  has  for  many 
years  ranked  as  third  in  wealth,  population  and  impor- 
tance, yielding  precedence  in  these  respects — outside  of 
Suffolk  County  which  is  practically  Boston — to  Middlesex 
alone.  It  became  a county  in  1648.  There  are  in  Massa- 
chusetts thirty-nine  towns  which  were  settled  before  1650. 
Twelve  of  these  towns, — about  one-third  of  the  whole, — 
are  in  Essex  County.  You  are  not  unprepared  to  hear 
that  agriculture  is  an  ancient  craft  in  Essex  County.  No 
county  in  the  State  is  older.  In  an  old  historic  section 
agriculture  is  a tradition  and  not  a new  experiment.  But 
had  we  time  to  look  together  at  the  census  tables,  they 
would  disclose  other  facts  to  some  of  which  you  are  not 
quite  so  well  prepared  to  listen. 

Essex  County  held,  from  the  taking  of  the  first  census 
in  1765  and  I knoTrnot  how  long  before,  down  to  the  for- 
mation of  this  Society  in  1817-18,  the  first  rank — not  the 
second  nor  the  third — amongst  the  fourteen  counties  of 
Massachusetts,  in  population  and  wealth  and  all  that  makes 
a people  strong  and  great.  Essex  County  then  paid  one- 


8 


fifth  of  the  entire  tax-levy  of  the  State.  The  State  then 
contained  twenty-six  and  only  twenty-six  great  towns  of 
3000  inhabitants  and  upwards.  Eleven  of  these  so-called 
great  towns — nearly  one-half  of  them — were  in  Essex 
County.  Of  all  the  towns  of  four  thousand  inhabitants 
and  upwards,  Essex  County  had  more  than  one-half. 
Shall  I pause  to  enumerate  these  great  towns,  for  every 
one  of  them  was  a trade-centre  and  furnished  a natural 
market  for  farm-produce.  They  were  Salem,  second  only 
to  Boston,  her  13,000  people  being  about  one-sixth  of  the 
population  of  the  County,  and  following  her  in  the  order 
of  population  came  Newburyport,  Gloucester,  Marblehead, 
Beverly,  Newbury,  Lynn,  Andover,  Danvers,  Ipswich  and 
Haverhill, — a noble  roll ! 

Will  you  pardon  me  if  I venture  one  step  further  into 
the  dry  details  of  the  census  table,  for  I wish  to  ask  your 
attention  to  a contrast  or  two  between  the  condition  of 
agriculture  in  this  county  now,  and  when  your  society 
was  formed. 

Essex  County  had  in  1817-18  three  towns — there  were 
no  cities  chartered  in  the  State  then — three  towns  and  no 
more,  having  a population  of  six  thousand  souls  and  up- 
wards. One  was  Salem,  another  was  Newburyport  and  the 
third  was  Gloucester.  Essex  County  has  today  seven  cities 
of  12,000  inhabitants  and  upwards  and,  besides  these,  five  or 
six  towns  of  6,000  inhabitants  and  upwards.  Is  there  no 
lesson  for  us  in  these  statistics?  These  people  are  con- 
sumers— they  must  be  fed.  These  facts  have  special 
meaning  for  the  farmer.  Will  you  be  patient  with  me  a 
moment  if  I endeavor  to  unfold  it? 

You  tell  me  that  I state  nothing  strange.  Whilst  the 
acreage  under  cultivation  is  substantially  not  enlarged,  the 
population  of  the  County  has  kept  pace  with  the  popula- 
tion of  the  Country.  Essex  County  had,  when  Pickering 
and  his  noble  fellows  brought  this  Society  into  being,  about 


9 


seventy-five  thousand  people.  It  has  more  than  four 
times  that  number  now, — about  330,000  people.  They 
must  be  fed,  and  it  needs  only  a glance  to  see  what  a 
bonanza  Essex  County  farming  might  have  proved  with 
such  a market  at  its  door,  but  for  the  utter,  unprecedented 
and  revolutionizing  change  in  other  conditions  of  the 
problem.  There  is  no  class  of  persons  in  the  county  so 
directly  and  so  vitally  interested  in  this  growth  and  cen- 
tralizing of  numbers  as  is  the  Essex  County  farmer. 

It  was  the  locomotive  engine  which  made  possible  the 
development  of  the  great  northwest,  and  it  was  the  loco- 
motive engine  which  built  up  eastern  cities  at  the  expense 
of  the  surrounding  towns,  and  the  locomotive  engine  was 
not  hit  upon  until  ten  years  after  this  Society  was  founded. 
This  contrivance,  in  conjunction  with  machinery  superced- 
ing hand-work  in  so  many  manufactures,  has  robbed  the 
country  population  of  its  natural  increase,  and  hived  our 
people  together  like  bees,  in  the  great  industrial  centres, 
— these  are  the  factors  in  our  migration  problem  which 
have  made  us  from  a rural  into  a city  people.  How 
thoroughly  this  change  has  followed  will  best  appear  again 
from  the  figures.  In  1820  the  proportion  of  the  popula- 
tion of  the  County  living  in  the  three  places  which  had 
6,000  inhabitants  and  upwards,  was  just  about  one  third, 
and  half  of  them  were  in  Salem.  In  1895  the  proportion 
of  the  people  of  the  County  living  in  places  of  6,000  inhabi- 
tants and  upwards,  is  thirteen-seventeenths  of  the  whole. 
In  other  words,  two  people  lived  in  the  country  then  to  one 
in  a large  town,  and  now  thirteen  people  live  in  a city  or 
large  town  to  four  in  a town  of  less  than  6,000  inhabitants. 

Time  would  not  serve  me  to  ask  how  far  the  general 
thrift  and  comfort  have  kept  pace  with  population.  Un- 
doubtedly these  have  advanced,  and  undoubtedly  the 
Essex  County  farmer  profits  by  it  in  full  proportion  with 
the  world  at  large.  But  how  has  this  apparent  corner 


10 


in  agricultural  produce — this  tremendous  advance  in  the 
demand  for  human  food  in  Essex  County,  with  no  con- 
siderable extension  of  the  farming  area,  and  a great  gain 
in  the  facilities  for  reaching  his  buyer, — how  have  these 
changes  affected  the  Essex  County  farmer  ? 

If  population  grows  and  centres  at  points  within  his  easy 
reach,  but  not  too  near,  that  helps  him  because  it  guaran- 
tees him  larger  sales  and  a quickened  activity  of  demand. 
If  population  grows  and  centres  at  points  too  near  him, 
his  patrimony  becomes  too  valuable  to  farm — the  assessors 
are  on  his  track  with  a larger  tax-bill, — the  land-operators 
are  after  him  with  speculative  offers, — land  which  he  held 
by  the  acre  will  be  appraised  by  the  foot,  and  he  is  con- 
fronted with  a choice  between  adopting  new  and  advanced 
methods  of  tillage  or  putting  his  farm  up  for  sale  in  house- 
lots. 

Modern  facilities  for  getting  about  have  revolutionized 
Essex  County  farming ; whilst  they  have  enlarged  the 
farmers’  market,  they  have  vastly  enlarged  the  area  from 
which  we  draw  supplies,  and  thus  exposed  him  to  a wider 
competition.  Products  which  were  staple  crops  in  1820 
cannot  now  be  raised  here,  because  cheap  transportation, 
first  making  possible  the  miraculous  development  of  the 
great  northwest,  and  then  bringing  its  crops  to  our  very 
threshold,  have  enabled  other  sections  to  lay  these  staples 
down  in  our  markets  cheaper  than  we  can  raise  them.  The 
farmer  who  would  make  his  ends  meet, — who  would  leave 
his  ancestral  birth-place  to  his  boys,  and  encourage  them  to 
stay  at  home  and  till  it, — must  buy  largely  of  what  he 
consumes,  and  raise  only  that  which  his  neighbors  will  buy 
of  him  to  his  advantage.  The  old  Essex  County  idea  that  a 
farm  was  a tract  of  arable  land  on  which  to  bring  up  a 
family,  who  were  to  inherit  it  and  improve  it  as  such,  and 
who  would  be  supported,  in  the  main,  by  its  varied  pro- 
ducts consumed  on  the  spot,  is  becoming  as  extinct  as  the 


[ [ f:  f;  f f:  V 

r i ' | fp  I ' I m I l I I ! I ! '(■  I 1 
| ; | ) ; / | / 

dodo  or  the  ichthyosaurus, — as  strange  and  out  of  date  as- 
the  old  colonial  farmhouse,  with  its  lean-to  slanting  north- 
ward, and  its  roof-tree  of  hand-hewn  rafters,  garnished 
with  pumpkins  and  crook-necks  and  bunches  of  braided 
onions  and  golden  seed-corn  and  sweet-marjoram  and  pen- 
nyroyal, dry  and  savory,  with  here  and  there  a home-cured 
ham,  or  a woodchuck’s  skin,  or  a dip  of  tallow  candles,  or 
some  turkeys’  wings  to  dust  out  the  brick  oven,  hung  up 
against  the  massive  chimney-stack, — and  with  its  ancient 
well-sweep  outside,  weighted  at  the  end  with  a generous 
boulder  of  our  native  granite, — and  over  all  in  leafy  majesty 
the  grand  old  elm,  like  a protecting  providence,  spread- 
ing its  sheltering  arms  against  the  vaulted  azure  of  the 
heavens. 

If  his  farm  is  within  easy  reach  of  some  growing  city  he 
soon  finds  himself  ranked  amongst  suburbans,  and  his 
property  assessed  accordingly.  Summer  sojourners  come 
out  to  help  consume  his  surplus  and  advance  his  prices. 

, His  milk  and  eggs  and  butter  and  poultry  and  kitchen- 
gardening and  orchard  products,  so  far  as  he  does  not  serve 
them  at  his  own  board, — his  hay  and  root  crops  and  cab- 
bages and  squashes,  will  be  consumed  by  boarders  or  sent  to 
market  in  the  neighboring  centre.  He  will  buy  his  meats 
where  he  buys  his  flour.  The  dust  of  our  county  highways 
no  longer  rises  to  the  droves  that  used  to  stir  it  on  their 
way  to  slaughter.  No  longer  is  it  possible  to  raise  beef 
and  mutton  in  Essex  County.  Meats  that  once  came 
to  our  shambles  on  the  hoof,  now  come  in  sides  and  quarters, 
or  in  cans  or  extracts.  We  cannot  compete  with  sections 
of  the  country  within  easy  railroad  reach  where  it  is  said 
they  have  corn  to  burn  for  fuel,  and  feed  good  wheat  to  fat 
cattle  because  it  pays  better  to  move  it  on  the  hoof  than 
through  the  elevator, — and  where  our  genial  friend,  the 
hog,  dropped,  it  is  said,  into  a hopper, — the  parting  smile 
still  lingering  on  his  lips, — may  find  himself  writhing  in 


12 


the  cold  embrace  of  merciless  machinery,  from  which  he 
shall  emerge,  by  the  turning  of  a crank  at  the  rate  of  so 
many  revolutions  per  minute,  resolved  into  such  elemental 
factors  as  sausages,  glue,  hams,  bone-meal,  souced  feet  and 
scrubbing-brushes  ; we  cannot  compete  with  a virgin  soil 
that  asks  no  nutriment  and  only  waits  do  be  broken  up  and 
planted — a flat,  vegetable  deposit  left  by  some  inland  sea 
that  has  escaped  its  confines — a rich  alluvial  mould  nine 
feet  deep,  it  is  said,  in  spots,  and  innocent  for  miles  of  such 
a feature  as  a scrub-tree  or  a pebble. 

The  farmer  under  all  these  influences  becomes  a trades- 
man. He  is  helped  by  bis  wits  as  much  as  by  his  bone  and 
sinew.  He  is  no  longer  the  husbandman  pure  and  simple, 
living  on  his  acres, — driving  his  grist  to  mill, — doing  his 
heavy  work  with  the  steers  he  bought  this  spring  to  beef 
them  a little  later, — hauling  his  heavy  fertilizers  about  from 
mussel-flats  and  peat-meadow  to  muck-heap  and  compost- 
bed,  and  tramping  to  Boston  with  his  bulky  night-loads  at 
the  tedious  pace  of  a double  team  of  oxen.  He  buys  his 
fertilizer  by  the  barrel  in  fine  powder,  and  flings  it  about  as 
he  would  salt  and  pepper  on  an  omelette.  It  may  force 
and  overtax  his  soil,  but  he  must  quicken  up  his  methods. 
He  ploughs  and  mows  and  reaps  by  horse-power.  He  rides 
to  market  behind  a pair  of  cheerful  steppers  and,  as  I heard 
a witty  agriculturist  once  remark  in  recounting  the  new 
methods, — instead  of  swinging  the  scythe  or  flail  or  plod- 
ding behind  the  plough  through  the  heat  of  the  solstice,  he 
trots  out  briskly  in  the  morning,  as  though  on  pleasure 
bent,  for  his  mowing  and  reaping,  and  has  a chilled  plough 
to  use  when  the  heat  is  unendurable.  Thus,  I take  it,  is  to 
be  ultimately  extracted  the  ray  of  sunshine  that  is  latent 
in  the  cucumber.  He  lives  by  what  he  buys  and  sells 
rather  than  on  what  he  sows  and  reaps.  He  watches  the 
market.  He  raises  the  crop  that  is  merchantable.  He  fol- 
lows the  price-lists  as  closely  as  he  follows  the  weather 


i3 


reports, — as  keenly  as  the  stock-broker  keeps  tally  of  the 
stock  market,  and  prices  current  listed  at  the  Broker’s 
Board.  He  becomes  less  and  less  self-sustaining — more 
and  more  the  business  partner  of  the  market-man  and  the 
produce-dealer.  I have  known  a farm  in  northern  New 
Hampshire  where  the  household  wore  home-spun,  woven 
on  a hand-loom  from  the  wool  of  sheep  that  cropped  the 
scanty  herbage  of  that  hillside  patrimony.  This  could  not 
be  seen  in  Essex  County  in  our  day.  But  probably  it 
could  have  been  seen  here  at  the  founding  of  this  society, 
when  Pickering  and  his  associates  were,  in  vigorous  terms, 
denouncing  a protective  tariff  as  hostile  to  agriculture, 
and  when  raw  cotton  was  sold  by  the  pound  over  the  coun- 
ters of  our  shops,  to  be  mixed  with  sheep’s  wool  in  the 
family  spinning  and  weaving.  If  the  farmer  is  to  be  the 
independent  character  we  have  known  him,  bearing  the 
brunt  of  our  historic  struggles,  backing  our  public  school 
system  when  it  needed  backing,  furnishing  the  conserva- 
tive element  in  town  finance  and  local  politics,  owning  the 
soil  in  modest  parcels,  and  pointed  at  as  the  model  of 
quiet  ease  and  content  and  manly  superiority  to  the  grind- 
ing ambition  to  be  rich  and  great, — who  stood  at  Lexing- 
ton and  Concord,  at  Saratoga  and  Louisburg  and  Ticonde- 
roga  and  Trenton  and  fired  on  every  field  a shot  heard 
round  the  world, — if  he  is  to  be  all  this,  he  must  maintain 
his  birthright  by  other  means  than  old-school  Essex  County 
farming.  He  must  reach  out  for  markets  to  be  opened  to 
him  by  specializing  his  crops.  He  must  avail  himself  of 
every  new  facility  for  distribution.  He  must  cheapen  his 
transportation  methods.  JHe  must  localize  his  sales.  He 
must  organize  for  freights,  and  multipty  and  magnify  his 
markets  nearer  home  where  his  produce  can  be  delivered 
fresher  and  cheaper. 

The  cost  of  production  is  not  a more  legitimate  element 
of  price  than  is  the  cost  of  distribution.  I have  here  a 


i4 


copy  of  the  Essex  Gazette  for  April,  1771,  in  which  it  ap- 
pears  that  from  and  after  the  spring  months  of  that  year,, 
three  ferry-boats  are  to  pass  and  repass  constantly  between 
Beverly  and  Salem  in  place  of  the  two  that  had  done  all 
the  carrying  there  before,  so  that,  as  we  are  assured,  “ by 
this  means  and  by  the  good  attendance  to  be  given,  trav- 
ellers may  pass  with  great  ease  and  dispatch.”  How 
much  of  the  market  which  Salem  and  Marblehead  and 
Lynn  have  afforded  for  years  to  the  hay  and  root-crops 
and  garden- truck  from  north  of  Essex  Bridge,  from  Ham- 
ilton and  Ipswich  and  Rowley  and  even  beyond  the  Mer- 
rimac,  could  have  existed  under  these  conditions,  before 
the  Revolution,  when  the  passage  of  Bass  River  was  ef- 
fected “ with  ease  and  despatch  ” in  two  or  three  mud- 
scows  ! Products  which  could  only  bear  transportation  a 
few  miles  in  those  days  because  it  was  so  costly  or  slow  or 
injurious,  can  now  be  sold  thousands  of  miles  from  where 
they  grow — California  fruits, — West  Indian, — Bermuda, — 
South  American  products  throughout  America,— New 
York  and  New  Jersey  and  Ohio  apples  throughout  Europe, 
— Wenham  ice  in  India  and  the  Orient, — Gloucester  fish 
in  the  Ohio  Valley. 

So  the  farmer  enjoys  a wider  market  at  the  same  time 
that  he  endures  a keener  competition.  He  must  not  only 
produce  cheaply.  He  must  reach  his  buyer  cheaply.  If 
the  distant  producer,  farming  where  land  is  cheap  and 
rich,  can  outdo  him  in  the  cost  of  production,  he  must  be 
able  to  reach  his  market  with  fresher  products  or  at  lower 
freights  or  with  more  attractive  varieties,  or  he  is  undone* 
The  matter  of  the  cheap  and  rapid  distribution  of  pro- 
ducts is  quite  too  little  studied.  Coal  is  a good  illustra- 
tion. The  value  of  coal  as  it  comes  out  of  the  pit  is  a 
small  fraction  of  what  it  costs  us  in  our  coal-bins, — coal 
at  the  pit,  if  it  would  not  bear  transportation  all  over  the 
continent,  would  be  almost  worthless.  The  little  village 


i5 


centered  round  a coal  pit,  which  could  reach  it  with  hand- 
barrows  or  supply  itself  with  tip-carts  would  never  create  a 
demand  that  would  sink  a shaft  below  the  surface,  or,  in 
other  words,  coal,  where  it  is  produced,  is  a drug  in  the 
market,  and  the  price  we  pay  for  coal  is  made  up  main- 
ly of  the  cost  of  distribution. 

Now  apply  this,  if  you  will,  to  Essex  County  farming. 
Every  day  my  car-ride  takes  me  through  many  acres  of 
splendid  cabbages  and  squashes, — inestimable  esculents,  in 
the  words  of  Choate,  but  bulky  crops  to  handle.  These 
are  destined  to  be  sold  at  a very  moderate  figure  in  thb 
Boston  market.  I never  look  at  them  without  reflecting  how 
unreasonable  a fraction  of  the  price  per  pound  at  which  the 
buyer  gets  them  is  made  up  of  the  inordinate  cost  of  prima- 
tive  modes  of  transportation.  If  they  could  reach  Boston 
by  some  cheaper  way,  the  buyer  would  get  them  cheaper, — 
the  farmer  would  make  a better  profit, — and  his  sales 
would  steadily  grow  greater.  When  I listen  at  midnight 
to  the  rumble  of  that  endless  caravan  of  market-wagons 
which  has  been  making  its  way  through  Salem  for  a 
century  since  Essex  Bridge  was  opened, — a long,  unbroken 
commissary-train  rolling  at  day-break  into  Boston  with  the 
day’s  supply  of  hay  and  market-gardening, — I cannot  resist 
the  obvious  reflection  that  close  along-side  the  highway  so- 
laboriously  traversed  is  an  electric  railway  track,  utterly 
unused  from  midnight  until  day-break,  which  is,  or  would 
seem  to  be,  the  natural  medium  for  collecting,  and  deliver- 
ing the  bulky  freight  requiring  night  transportation.  If 
this  is  true  of  the  Boston  supply  it  is  true  also  of  the  local 
markets  of  the  county.  These  will  develop  more  and  more 
as  the  farmer  specializes  his  crops,  and  concentrates  his 
forces,  and  raises  what  will  sell,  and  buys  all  else,  and  for- 
gets all  that  delightful  variety  of  farm-production,  which 
went  out  with  quilting  bees,  and  home  spinning  and  weav- 
ing, and  peat  fuel,  and  the  grist  mill.  He  must  at  his- 


peril,  even  if  his  acres  suffer  for  the  forcing,  search  out  the 
potent  fertilizer  and  plant  the  early  delicacy, — something 
that  will  steal  the  march  upon  his  vigilant  and  active  neigh- 
bors, for  the  adage  about  the  early  bird  that  catches  the 
worm  is  not  more  true  than  this, — that  it  is  the  early  cu- 
cumber— the  early  celer}^ — the  early  spinach — the  early 
radish — the  early  lettuce — the  early  tomato,  that  catches 
the  customer. 

You  do  not  fail  to  perceive  the  drift  of  my  reflections, 
which  time  will  not  permit  me  to  develop  further.  I would 
restore  the  individuality, — the  autonomy, — the  independent 
activity  of  the  local  market  and  make  the  smaller  cities  and 
greater  towns  self-reliant  centres  of  consumption  and  dis- 
tribution,— the  parade  of  yesterday  is  precisely  in  this  line, 
— I would  have  them  precisely  what  they  were  before  the 
railroad  system  built  up  at  Boston  a central  market  for 
eastern  Massachusetts,  and  made  of  it,  as  it  were,  a great 
prehensile  octopus  cast  up  on  the  shore  of  Massachusetts 
Bay,  reaching  out  for  everything,  and  stretching  its  iron 
tentacles — its  steel-rail  tentacles,  rather — for  thirty  miles 
around,  and  sucking  into  its  inexorable  maw,  not  your 
farm-products  alone,  but  a good  part  of  the  business  energy 
and  brain-power  and  wealth-producing  capacity  and  art 
capacity  and  capacity  for  recreation  that  belong  of  right  to 
the  surrounding  country.  I would  have  vegetables  and 
fruits  and  butter  and  eggs  and  many  of  the  products  that 
depend  on  their  freshness  for  their  merchantable  value, 
treated  very  much  as  milk,  for  instance,  is  treated  to-day, 
— treated  as  they  can  well  be  treated  when  street  railway 
lines  perform  their  destined  function — that  is  to  say,  trans- 
ported not  so  much  to  a central  market  at  Boston,  where 
the  wholesaler  may  deal  them  out  to  a country  retailer, 
who  often  brings  them  back  again, — but  moving  much  more 
directly  from  producer  to  consumer.  A little  more  organ- 
izing capacity  and  a little  more  independence  in  the  rela- 


1 7 


tions  between  producer  and  consumer  would  dispense,  in 
large  part  with  the  services  of  the  middleman  and  save  his 
profits  to  the  bettering  of  both  of  them. 

A class  of  reasoners  has  lately  appeared  who  hold  that 
taxes  should  be  levied  upon  land  alone.  Land,  they  say, 
can  be  seen.  It  can  not  escape  the  grip  of  the  tax-collector 
like  stock-certificates  and  paper  values.  This  view  is  most 
attractive  to  the  average  city  resident.  He  holds  no  real 
estate.  He  expects  to  hold  none.  The  view  may  become 
popular.  Most  people  have  their  savings  in  stocks  and 
banks  and  business  securities  mainly.  But  the  farmer  will 
have  no  easy  task  to  reconcile  this  view  with  his  prosperity. 
If  the  burthen  of  the  public  revenues  is  to  be  borne,  in  the 
first  instance,  by  land,  it  would  seem  to  follow,  that  the 
holding  of  land  will  be  a more  precarious  investment  than 
it  is,  inasmuch  as  a larger  money  return  from  the  products 
of  land  must  be  assured  every  year  in  order  to  make  the 
investment  a safe  one.  There  must  be  an  ample  reserve 
fund  to  meet  contingencies.  No  man  can  then  afford  to 
take  the  risk  of  holding  land  except  he  have  a plethoric 
bank-account  to  fall  back  upon,  to  meet  his  taxes  in  case  of 
crop-failure,  or,  what  is  quite  as  bad,  in  case  of  price-failure 
due  to  over-production.  The  acreage  of  the  county,  it 
would  seem,  must  in  this  event  pass  out  of  the  hands  of 
the  practical  farmer  and  be  absorbed  by  great  land-propri- 
etors, and  the  tiller  of  the  soil  be  driven  to  trade,  or  to 
manufactures,  or  to  the  uncongenial  lot  of  tilling  his  own 
birthright  acres  as  the  tenant  of  another.  You  say  we  are 
in  no  danger  of  this, — that  the  proposition  needs  only  to  be 
stated,  to  be  scouted.  The  national  election  now  in  pro- 
gress ought  to  persuade  us  that  no  political  vagary  is  too 
fantastic  to  command  its  votaries — that  there  is  no  such 
thing  as  the  impossible  in  politics.  It  is  the  whole  people 
of  the  commonwealth  who  have  the  settlement  of  methods 
of  taxation.  In  considering  the  single-tax  proposition,  the 


i8 


farmer — the  holder  of  arable  land — will  do  well  to  remem- 
ber that  he  is  in  a hopeless  minority  in  this  community — 
that  he  is  no  longer  where  Timothy  Pickering  left  him,  but 
— thanks  to  railroads  and  cotton-mills  and  machine  methods 
generally — he  is  now  outnumbered  two  to  one  by  the  city 
populations.  The  centre  of  gravity  is  shifted.  Only  one- 
ninth  of  the  people  of  this  state,  in  1817-18,  lived  in  the 
two  towns,  Boston  and  Salem,  which  had  at  that  time 
population  enough  for  a city  charter.  The  other  eight- 
ninths  of  the  people  lived  in  towns  of  less  than  twelve 
thousand  inhabitants,  or,  in  other  words,  eight  times  as  many 
people  lived  in  the  country  as  in  the  city.  To-day,  consid- 
erably more  than  two-thirds  of  the  people  of  this  common- 
wealth live  under  city  governments.  Or  in  other  words — 
more  than  twice  as  many  people  are  living  in  the  cities  to- 
day as  are  living  in  the  country,  where  they  can  smell  the 
breath  of  kine  and  drink  in  the  odors  of  the  fresh-turned 
sod.  The  farmers  of  Essex  County  and  the  State,  with 
quite  as  much  acreage  as  ever  to  be  taxed,  and  every  foot 
of  it  quite  as  much  in  evidence  as  ever,  find  their  voting 
strength  as  compared  with  the  whole  population,  fatally 
belittled.  Less  than  50,000  acres  of  the  soil  of  Essex 
County  lie  within  the  area  of  her  seven  cities.  More  than 
225,000  acres  of  it  lie  in  the  twenty-eight  towns  of  the 
county.  The  proportion  in  other  parts  of  the  state  is  pretty 
constant.  I need  not  trouble  you  with  the  figures.  So 
far,  then,  as  the  matter  of  a single  land-tax  is  likely  to  be- 
come an  issue  to  be  determined  between  the  city  and  the 
rural  population,  the  dwellers  under  city  charters,  more 
than  two-thirds  of  the  people  of  the  state,  will  find  their 
interests  little  menaced  by  the  proposal.  The  question 
involves  a score  of  nice  and  difficult  considerations.  But 
it  is  easy  to  see,  precisely  for  the  reason  of  their  difficulty 
and  delicacy,  that,  to  the  average  city  dweller  who  gets  his 
income  from  trade,  from  transportation,  from  the  cotton- 


l9 


mill  or  the  shoe-factory, — who  owns  no  land  and  hires  the 
house  he  lives  in,  and  has  made  no  study  of  the  abstract 
question  of  adjusting  taxes,  the  proposition  to  levy  a single 
tax,  and  that  on  land,  has  an  attraction  hard  to  be  over- 
come. It  looks  simple — a great  consideration  in  adjusting 
taxes — it  looks  easy  to  assess  and  difficult  to  evade- 
If  you  urge  the  terrible  disturbance  of  prices  and  land 
tenures  which  must  result,  he  looks  complacently  to  the 
future,  that  special  providence  of  schemers,  to  readjust 
such  matters.  I do  not  argue  the  probability  or  the  im- 
probability of  such  an  issue.  I merely  call  attention  to  it 
as  a possibility,  and  to  the  hopeless  preponderance  of  the 
cities  over  the  towns, — of  the  non-holders  over  the  holders 
of  land,  in  population,  in  wealth,  in  political  control,  in 
everything  except  intelligence  and  character  which  goes 
to  make  up  the  collective  potency  of  a people.  And  I 
venture  the  prediction  that  if  a single  tax  on  land  is  ever 
substituted  for  the  present  system,  the  Essex  County 
farmer,  as  we  have  known  him, — as  he  was  known  to 
Timothy  Pickering  in  the  opening  quarter  of  this  century 
— the  master  of  a little  farm,  well  tilled — -the  holder  of  his 
hundred  acres  upon  which  he  first  saw  the  sunlight  smiling, 
and  upon  which  it  is  his  hope  to  live,  and  toil,  and  work 
out  a career,  and  find  his  comfort  and  his  refuge  from 
corroding  cares,  and  rear  a family  and  die  respected,  will 
find  himself  ground  to  powder  between  the  upper  and  the 
nether  millstones  of  competition  and  taxation,  and  will 
disappear,  in  the  long  process  of  financial  readjustment, 
like- flies  in  winter,  out  of  sight  forever. 

May  that  day  be  distant ! May  some  better  fate  await 
the  farmer  of  Essex  County  ! May  we  not  live  to  see  dear 
old  Massachusetts  with  all  her  little  farms — the  very  bed- 
rock of  our  splendid  citizenship  and  personal  independence 
and  intelligence  and  martial  strength, — may  we  not  live  to 
see  this  grand  old  commonwealth  given  over  to  any 


20 


baronial  notions,  born  of  a great  landed  proprietary,  with 
its  costly  machinery  and  extravagant  equipment  and 
showy  methods,  within  the  reach  of  opulence  alone — 
its  aggrandizing  tendencies,  its  unfraternal  social  leanings, 
by  dint  of  which  the  haughty  spirit  of  patronage  may 
supplant  the  better  instinct  of  good-fellowship  and  neigh- 
borly good-will,  and  Massachusetts  grow  to  be — instead  of 
the  glorious  ideal  of  the  past,  her  little  communities  emu- 
lating one  another  in  their  successes — knit  together  more 
firmly  by  sharing  one  another’s  struggles, — instead  of  this 
her  little  town  communities  merged  into  one  great  central- 
ized, consolidated  factory  village,  with  a few  rich  mill- 
owners  and  fancy  farmers  at  the  top  and  a mass  of  help- 
less, restless,  discontented  wage-earners  looking  up  to 
them  without  appeal,  as  the  arbiters  of  their  fate. 

Let  me  close  with  the  hope  that  long  before  such  a 
destiny  shall  overtake  the  farmers  of  this  county,  the  new 
facilities  for  getting  about  and  for  the  distribution  of  pro- 
ducts,—the  better  roads  we  are  to  have — thanks  mainly  to 
summer  pleasure-travel  and  the  bicycle — protected,  as  I 
think  they  will  be,  by  a premium  offered  by  the  towns  on 
broad  tires,  equal  in  amount  to  the  cost  of  the  change  to 
the  farmer  who  adopts  them, — the  electric  railway  system, 
soon,  I believe  to  be  made  more  serviceable  to  the  public 
and  more  remunerative  to  the  investors,  by  being  applied 
from  midnight  until  day-break  to  the  collecting  and  distri- 
buting of  freight  expressage — that  these  and  other  changes 
may  make  the  toils  of  husbandry  lighter  and  its  profits 
greater, — and  that  specialized  products  and  localized 
markets  may  add  to  the  assurance  with  which  the  husband- 
man shall  sow  his  crops  and  possess  his  acres.  So  that 
the  agriculture  of  the  county  may  approach  the  opening 
century  with  an  unclouded  future,  and  be  what  it  has  been 
to  us,  what  it  was  to  the  founders  of  your  society — what 
Timothy  Pickering  said  it  was,  the  “noblest  of  pursuits  ”» 


— may  still  remain  the  stay  of  public  confidence  and 
credit — the  anchorage  ground  of  conservative  hopes  and 
aspirations — the  equal  hand  maid  of  commerce  and  the 
arts — the  reliance  of  state  and  nation,— a staff  in  war,  a 
cradle  of  good  citizenship  in  peace,  a training-school  for 
patriots  in  both ! 


